Cody Snavely
LOS ANGELES, CA—The 2024 Major League Baseball World Series is set, with the National League Champion Los Angeles Dodgers facing off against the American League Champion New York Yankees.
However, both teams got here to this stage in very different ways. At the same time, both offenses ranked in the top five in the league in runs, home runs, batting average, on-base percentage, and OPS; the pitching between these clubs couldn’t be further from the same.
This October, the Los Angeles Dodgers had to go an unorthodox route in the pitching department. After losing multiple starting pitchers to season-ending injuries in the final month of the 2024 Major League Baseball regular season, the team only had three traditional starters: Jack Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Walker Buehler.
The Dodgers bullpen was tasked with pitching fifty-seven combined innings through the National League Division Series and the National League Championship Series with three bullpen games thrown in.
The New York Yankees had a more traditional approach as they entered October with a full rotation despite having to place left-handed starter Nestor Cortes on the 15-day injured list with arm/elbow inflammation.
New York starters were able to pitch forty-four innings this October in nine games, while the bullpen was depended on less than Los Angeles, only collecting 38.2 innings across the American League Division Series and the American League Championship Series.
However, where these two juggernauts truly defer from each other is their pitching strategy, and that’s what Lance Brozdowski, a Player Development Analyst, goes over in a tremendous in-depth breakdown of both clubs pitching through the process and how what happens when your preferred pitching strategy is something your opponent loves?
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a 4-seam fast-ball driven team and have been for the last two seasons. The usage rate in the 2023 regular season was 37%, which ranked third in the league, while in 2024, it increased to 38%, which ranked second.
Their overreliance on the fastball is by design, as it sets up the next two pitches that they often use, the slider and sweeper combination.
That message held true in the postseason for Los Angeles, as they are pounding 4-seam fastballs at a 43.6% clip, which is way above the 33% league average.
Los Angeles also throws above average in sliders at 18.3% (15% league average) and sweepers at 9% (8% league average), and this is primarily due to the pitchers the Dodgers have on their roster.
However, as Brozdowski points out, the New York Yankees have destroyed the four-seam fastball this postseason, ranking first in batting average (.291), slugging percentage (.593), xwOBA (.469), and first in run value (+9).
The New York Yankees, unlike the Dodgers, take a different approach, using more of a sinker and change-up approach to attack hitters.
This postseason, Yankees pitchers have been under league average in terms of 4-seam fastball usage, throwing it 30.9% of the time while ranking above league average in sinker usage at 18.1% and change-up usage at 15.6%.
However, just like the Yankees excel at hitting fastballs, the Dodgers have been great at hitting sinkers and change-ups this season, and in the postseason, ten hitters had an xwOBA over .400 versus sinkers.
With all of that said, it will be interesting to see how both teams attack each other in this series and if either side makes any drastic adjustments or continues pitching to its strengths.
However, I highly recommend everyone check out the video, as it gives a great perspective on the art of pitching and game planning at this Major League level.
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